


Smoke and Mirrors

by itallstartedwithdefenestration



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dream Sequences, M/M, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 07:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5908825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itallstartedwithdefenestration/pseuds/itallstartedwithdefenestration
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam spends most of his dreams with Lucifer trying to prove that they're nothing alike. Until he realizes that they are, and that maybe, just maybe, he's sick of denying it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke and Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Smoke and Mirrors](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6333292) by [wymooose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wymooose/pseuds/wymooose)



> so I started this fic in September 2015, wrote 5k over a month or so, abandoned it sometime in October, picked it back up to complete in time for my three-year Samifer anniversary, and wrote 7k in two days
> 
> I have no idea what happened
> 
> hope y'all enjoy~

Two nights after Lucifer appeared to Sam the first time, he shows up again, this time in a musty wet hotel Sam vaguely remembers from Louisiana, when he was six or so and hadn’t started school yet, still thought everyone lived the way they did. He has no idea why he’s dreaming the Devil up in a place like this, why his subconscious would have picked here over anywhere else, but he supposes the specifics don’t really matter. 

He thinks maybe he should be fighting this. Turning to run or pulling out a knife, even if it wouldn’t help—but Sam doesn’t think he’s in danger. Not here.

He thinks maybe that scares him more than anything else.

“Hello, Sam,” Lucifer says, walking over to sit on the mattress. “Where are we tonight?”

Sam stares down at his hands, doesn’t answer. Making small talk with Satan isn’t exactly number one on his list of top priorities. 

Lucifer exhales, quiet. Which Sam finds odd, because angels don’t have to breathe. “You don’t have to be angry with me, Sam,” he says. “As I told you before, I don’t intend to hurt you. And I will never lie to you—”

“Oh, right,” Sam says, sarcastic, before he can manage to bite the words back. “ _You_ don’t lie. Right.”

Lucifer frowns, just slightly. Sam watches him for a little while, apparently trying to sift through this new tone from Sam in his mind. “Humanity’s perception of my character has been—warped, over the centuries,” he says finally, sounding a little wistful. “I am not the monster all of you believe me to be.”

“Bullshit,” Sam says, cold. “You still want to destroy the planet. All your talk about being different—it’s just smoke and mirrors.”

“I would have thought that you, of all people, would understand what it means to be seen as something you aren’t,” Lucifer says, and his voice is almost gentle but it still jars Sam, bad enough to make him flinch. 

Because yeah. Lucifer’s right. Sam knows exactly what it means. There were all the years of kids at school teasing him, every new town he visited, because he dressed dirty, had grease in his hair and blood under his fingernails. All the hunters he’s ever encountered sneering at him—for his small size, when he was younger, and then more recently because of the demon blood. The rumors, thanks to Gordon fucking Walker, that he’s the Antichrist. People are either intimidated by him to the point of avoidance or they think he’s the Devil incarnate and set out to kill him, there’s never been any middle ground, and two nights ago Sam might have thought he was talking to Jess but that doesn’t make what he said any less true—he’s a freak. He might not be the raging monster everyone thinks he is but the potential is there, the blood is there—

Yeah, he gets it. He understands what Lucifer’s saying. And he hates himself for it. 

Outside of the dreamscape hotel room windows, the sun is setting slow over live oak and concrete. Casting a rosy golden sheen over the land, orange scrim on the deep verdant leaves, and Sam feels his breath catch. It shouldn’t matter if he understands Lucifer or not. He’s still going to destroy this. Sam’s planet. The only thing Sam knows. All that he understands.

He says, “Get out of my head,” without turning to look. There’s a pause, a shimmering hesitation Sam can feel weighing the air down, and then. A flap of wings, all the space behind him condensed and shaken, and Sam is left alone. Smell of cordite and ozone in the air. A feeling in his chest like he just missed something huge.

~

Sam falls into bed with a low, pained grunt. His whole body feels like one giant bruise; the scrapings of claws still raked vicious up his back, something throbbing in his left arm. He vaguely hears Dean claiming first shower and tries to find the energy to tell him he can have all the showers, Sam’s just going to rest for a little while, but he’s already pitching forward, falling through the thin glass plate of consciousness into a brightly lit motel room, somewhere east of Cheboygan. Sam remembers this one; summer of 1993, and he and Dean had spent three weeks alone, Sam watching Cartoon Network while Dean practiced throwing his Bowie knife into the chipped and charred wall behind the bed. 

Lucifer is standing by the window, leaning against the sill. His shoulders are tense, his face partially hidden by the burn of the sun, and Sam thinks for a second he can see the shadow of wings on the wall. 

“I’m not saying yes, so if that’s what you’re here for, forget it,” he says, but when Lucifer turns at last so Sam can see his face there is none of that longing, aching wistfulness from last night. He looks angry instead, close to furious, and Sam’s heart nearly stops in his chest for a few seconds before he realizes the anger isn’t for him. 

Lucifer walks over to Sam, his hand stretched out like he wants to touch, and Sam jerks back before he realizes what he’s done. Before he remembers that Lucifer is already pissed off enough at him without him trying to make it worse.

Lucifer says, “You’re hurt,” in this curiously flat voice, and Sam says:

“Well, I mean—yeah. Kinda comes with the job.”

Lucifer glares at Sam’s arm, as though it’s done him some horrible misdeed. The vicious throbbing sensation has in the dream lost some of its intensity, reduced to a dull, pervasive ache Sam hadn’t even noticed before Lucifer drew attention to it. “You could be more careful,” he starts. “Your health is—”

“Oh, right,” Sam interrupts, his own anger flaring up, because how _dare_ Lucifer do this. How dare he act like he gives a shit about Sam; how dare he pretend to understand how much Sam resents the life for putting his own at risk every goddamn day. When all Lucifer’s got are ulterior motives and no real concept of what it means to feel. To be human. “I can’t get hurt because it would mean damaging your precious vessel, isn’t that it?”

“Sam—”

“If _I’m_ hurt it’s such a fucking inconvenience for _you,_ isn’t it. Well, guess what—” and he reaches to his back before he can stop to think about what he’s doing. Digs his nails into the claw marks littered along his spine, wrenches in. Hissing out sharp at the pain, glaring at Lucifer the whole time. The sun ringing a false halo behind his head as he stares down at Sam, trembling now with his rage, and Sam knows, he _knows_ it’s still not for him, but for the hunt. The barriers that have risen between them. The fact that he can’t make Sam _listen,_ no matter how hard he tries. And maybe, just maybe, a little angry at Sam’s anger, too—at Sam’s annoyance in his own empathy. 

Sam knows good and damn well Lucifer wishes he’d just accept how alike they are, but Sam won’t. He can’t. 

When he pulls his hand back, there’s blood caked underneath his fingernails again. Sharp insistent ache digging into his skin and he wishes he wasn’t like this, that he didn’t feel the need to prove his differences between himself and the things he hunts. Dean’s never had a problem with it, with his own identity, not the way Sam does. 

Sam knows good and damn well what that means, and he hates that, too.

“Are you finished maiming yourself?” Lucifer asks quietly. He’s never taken his eyes off Sam, not once, as if he’s trying to take Sam’s attempt to hurt himself and use it for his own punishment, instead. 

“You don’t care outside of how valuable I am as a vessel, do you,” Sam replies, and isn’t quite sure why he’s even bothering to ask. The answer doesn’t matter. Or it shouldn’t.

Lucifer’s face does a complicated twist, like he’s not quite sure how to show whatever it is he’s feeling. “If I told you you’re wrong, would you believe me?”

Sam snorts. Shakes his head—but he can’t quite look at Lucifer when he does it. Staring off at the wall instead, his gaze roving over the deep embedded scratch marks Dean made sixteen years ago. 

He feels something brush his skin a few minutes later—cool and dry and soft, running over his arm and back and everywhere else, the little places on his body that ache on and off depending on the day and where Sam is, what he’s been doing. It feels lighter than fingers, almost—almost like feathers, like a breath of air. Electric and tingling and Sam sucks his lower lip in between his teeth, feeling the sensation inside him, seeping into his bones, smell in the room like the air just before a storm. He knows Lucifer is next to him, he can feel his presence just there, but he won’t look, he doesn’t want to see whatever it is that’s being done to him—

Wings flutter. Sam spins around, his heart in his throat, but Lucifer is gone. The sun shining bright and too cheery on the square of floor where he was.

Sam shifts. Feels the muscles in his arm and back move smooth, with fluidity. No aches. No deep gouged blood streaked on his spine, or under his nails.

He sinks down onto the bed. He can’t tell if he’s shaking from anger, or if it’s something else. 

~

Sam doesn’t see Lucifer again until nearly a month later. He and Dean are set up in a town where people make their livelihoods on a massive lake, a town where drownings have increased by forty percent in the last two months. They think it’s a water wraith but they aren’t positive, and the fact that Sam’s spent the past three days on a boat with his brother, waiting for it to tip over, has done a number of really nasty things to his nerves. 

Dean’s off interviewing witnesses and Sam’s doing laptop research, but it’s late afternoon and the sun’s full in his face, the coffee burned out through his veins a long time ago and he’s almost pitiful with exhaustion. He’s barely put his head down and closed his eyes when he finds himself on the cement balcony of a Super 8 somewhere in Nevada. (Thirteen, going through the first of a long series of painful growth spurts. Dean left for three days to help John finish up the hunt and Sam missed the first week of seventh grade as a result; spent his time instead visiting little old Mrs. Barnes and her Pomeranian three doors down. There was a lot of chicken noodle soup, and Sam perfected his bingo while Mrs. Barnes chain smoked and sometimes called him ‘Jack darling’.) The sky is overcast and Sam feels Lucifer before he sees him, walking out of the room at his back.

“Where the hell have you been?” Sam snaps, irritated without understanding why. “You heal me and then you’re gone for a month?” He laughs, no humor in it. “Even Cas has more tact than you,” he says, though he thinks they both know that isn’t quite true. 

He can tell Lucifer is hovering, unsure, and he shifts over, giving him room. When Lucifer sits it’s done as almost a facsimile of a true human sitting. He does everything like that, Sam’s noticed—with a kind of fierce concentration, a vicious focus on the smallest actions. When he frowns, or smiles, it’s done with his entire face, and when he looks at Sam it’s with an intensity, a burning frantic need that echoes up through the grace-filled channels of his human vessel and out through the clear stellar blue of his irises. He is very much an angel wrapped and folded into human flesh and Sam cannot even begin to imagine what that must be like. To be so bent and compressed—and into something he hates—

Lucifer says, “I know I wasn’t welcome,” and he says, “I was angry. I needed to burn some of it off.”

A shiver rails up Sam’s spine. The question must register on his face before he’s even fully formed it in his mind because Lucifer sighs. He does that, too, in a way that makes it seem like he’s trying. Trying so hard to do human things, to be the best possible imitation of human—but why? For Sam? The idea seems impossible, yet there’s no other explanation. None Sam can figure out, anyway. 

“No one was killed,” he says. “There was a minor earthquake in Toronto and a few small tornadoes in the Midwest. A small avalanche in Tibet. No one died, Sam. I promise.”

It doesn’t make sense. Sam clenches his hands tighter around the balcony railings, trying not to be angry. Though he’s finding it difficult, with all the things Lucifer keeps doing for him.

“Why are you giving me all this?” he asks. “What am I gonna owe you when you get sick of doing me favors?”

Lucifer tilts his head to the side. “You don’t owe me anything, Sam—”

“I won’t say yes just because you saved some people’s lives and fixed my arm, Lucifer.”

“I’m not expecting you to.” Soft, and so sincere it makes Sam feel sick. He can’t look over, the burning of those eyes already too much on his shoulder, the side of his face. 

He knows better than to trust anything Lucifer’s saying. Nothing in his life has ever come without a price. He’s still wearing some of them wrapped around his neck: Ruby. The demon blood. Ava and Jake…

He says, “You can’t just disappear for a month, okay? I don’t like not knowing where you are.”

The corner of Lucifer’s mouth twitches. “You get worried about me, Sam?”

“About what you’re going to do, yeah,” Sam snaps. Fighting against the flush he can feel rising up his neck, spilling out and staining his cheeks. “I don’t trust you. At all.” 

Lucifer sighs again. “Sam—” 

“No. I know. You don’t lie. You want to give me everything. I heard you the first fifty times.” He shakes his head, watching the desert shimmer on the horizon, the faint promise of sunlight hovering just behind the clouds. 

“It’s just hard, okay,” he says, after a while. “Just—with everything I know about you—”

“Do you want me to go?” 

“No,” Sam says immediately, and is startled by the suddenness of his answer. But he can taste the truth of it on his tongue.

He’s not sure what changed—if anything changed at all. He just knows he likes having Lucifer where he can see him, likes knowing where he is, as opposed to feeling that wary uncertainty and wondering if Lucifer is off somewhere burning up a forest, or blowing up a monument.

They’re both quiet for a while. Sam pulls his legs back from between the balcony slats; stands, stretching his arms over his head. He’s aware on some level of Lucifer’s eyes on him, watching, perhaps coveting Sam’s body because it was designed for him, admiring the way Sam moves, fluid and human and flawed though he is—

Lucifer says, “How can I gain your trust, Sam?” all quiet , like the balance of the world hangs on Sam’s answer—Sam tries not to think about how true that really is—and when Sam looks back, Lucifer is standing, too. This sort of desperation in his eyes, a kind of heavy sadness, and Sam exhales. Drags a hand through his hair. 

“I don’t know,” he says, open and honest because so far that’s what Lucifer’s been with him, and Sam figures he owes him that much. Even if Lucifer keeps telling him there’s no debt attached to what he’s given Sam thus far. “I mean—you’re _Lucifer,_ for Christ’s sake.” And an angel, and so far all the angels have done is screw them over, but Sam doesn’t say that.

Lucifer isn’t really like the other angels, anyway.

Sam bites his lower lip. Lucifer is still watching him, waiting with a honed, practiced patience Sam cannot fathom, and Sam says:

“You’ve kept your word so far. I guess we’ll see where that goes.”

Lucifer nods, one corner of his mouth lifted slightly like Sam’s just given him the best news in all the millennia he’s been alive. Murmurs, “Until tomorrow, then,” and vanishes. Leaving Sam to watch the clouds roll over the desert sky on his own.

~

They kill a werewolf in Colorado, and afterwards Dean goes off to spend time with Cheryl and Candy from the bar, leaving Sam to walk back to the motel alone. It’s cold out, early October air settling down into his bones, and he’s shivering by the time he gets back to the room. Quick shower and then into bed, piling the covers over himself, and he’s asleep before he’s even put his head on the pillow.

The room this time is nondescript. Dirty carpet Sam doesn’t want to touch, ugly brown sheets and peeling wallpaper. Just one of a thousand motels Sam’s stayed in since he was six months old, rooms that blur and fade into each other after a while; mattresses that give you backache and rusting taps in the bathroom, lukewarm shower water.

He scratches idly at his left arm, listening to the low water rush of traffic outside the window. The chill from Colorado has followed him into his dream, and it takes Sam a little while to realize it isn’t coming from the weather.

Lucifer is leaning against the bathroom door, radiating cold. He’s still wearing the same clothes—jeans, faded Army green tee, blue jacket—and Sam asks:

“Don’t you get sick of wearing the same thing every day?”

Lucifer glances down at himself in surprise, like he hadn’t even noticed until this moment that he was wearing clothes. “It doesn’t bother me, no,” he says, and then, “I had Nick pick out this outfit, you know. Before—”

“—before you smothered his consciousness and trapped him in his own body,” Sam interjects, without really thinking. Listening to his voice, all tight and hard with anger, and it just makes him tired, burning all his energy on trying to hate Lucifer so much, all the time. The one thing Dean and Bobby and even Cas all expect from him, more than anything, more even than his relapse into blood addiction. This constant unwavering fury at the Devil and Sam knows it should feel right, like retribution, like claiming back a part of himself, but it just feels forced. Worn straight through.

Lucifer says, “I burned Nick out, Sam. His consciousness is in Heaven now, with his family.” It’s a quiet admission, no judgment towards Sam for asking, but Sam can’t help the guilt that rises up in his chest anyway.

“You burned—”

“It’s what he asked for,” Lucifer says. “He was suicidal, he didn’t need to continue suffering.” There’s something strangely defiant in his expression, something almost challenging, and Sam can tell without asking he wants, badly, to be told that he was right. To be told that he did something correctly. Which Sam thinks maybe Lucifer hasn’t been told in a long time.

And Sam gets it. Oh, hell, he gets Lucifer, and it’s maybe the hardest part of all of this to accept. Because they both have vicious martyr complexes. Willingness to believe in something long after everyone else has cast it aside, to the point where they’ll risk their own lives just to salvage whatever it is, burn through all of it, themselves and each other, before they’ll give up. Sacrifice and vengeance—Sam for his mother, for Jess, for the parts of his life that were twisted and ruined by Azazel; Lucifer against what his Father, his siblings, all of Heaven did to him—all of it mirrored side by side in their personalities. Sam’s showing up in his frantic desperate attempt at getting away, at leading a normal life, wanting acceptance and acknowledgement for his own achievements, instead of piggybacking off Dean’s all the time. Lucifer’s manifesting in a terrifying undercurrent of fury and power and barely held-back rage that fuels everything he does, all precision and unnerving silence and prowess. Both of them with this hunger, this need to prove themselves, to stake claim in the world as individuals.

He’s scared of it, of how alike he and the Devil really are at their cores. But it doesn’t feel bad, not really, not like Sam knows it should. It feels instead like a piece of him has been slotted back into place that was missing for a very long time. This hollow space right in his ribs he wasn’t even aware of until Lucifer showed up in his dreams and slipped between the cracks.

Sam says, “I, uh—I shouldn’t have snapped at you,” and he says, “You did the right thing, Lucifer. You did okay.”

He swears he feels something close to relief in the center of his chest, relief which isn’t his own, but if he tries to think about how he might be starting to feel what Lucifer feels, he’ll implode. 

Instead: “It’s cold in here,” and Lucifer smiles, just barely, glancing down at his scuffed up hiking boots.

“What your people don’t know about me is that I’m ice, at my core,” he explains. Sounding almost proud, in a way that’s very different from the brash false confidence Sam’s used to from Dean; a sort of subtle almost hesitant self-praise, like Lucifer isn’t sure he’s allowed to acknowledge the parts of him that are good. “In my true form, I burn colder than the Antarctic Sea. You would not be able to touch me with your bare hands.”

Sam thinks of how hot he is, most of the time. This constant feeling like he’s running a low-grade fever, always sweating even in the winter, and he’s wondered before if it’s from the demon blood. 

Now he thinks maybe his body would have been naturally hot even without Azazel’s help, just as an automatic protection against the frozen parts of his designated archangel. The two of them complementing each other, counterpoint in temperature as in everything else. The idea makes him want to smile, if only a very little.

Instead, he asks, “Does it bother you?”

“What?” Lucifer says, still watching Sam like he’s the most fascinating thing on the planet, and Sam doesn’t know how to tell Lucifer he isn’t worth that. 

“What you just said,” Sam explains. “About how I couldn’t touch your true form—does it bother you that I can’t?”

“Why should it—”

“Because it means I’m human,” Sam says, watching Lucifer’s face so carefully. Watching for that shift, the subtle tensing of the lines around his eyes, the tightening of his mouth. Not quite sure why he wants to challenge Lucifer right now, when things are feeling okay, except that this is important. All their cards laid out on the table, bare.

Lucifer’s nostrils flare out, a gesture Sam isn’t sure he’s conscious of—or if he is, then certainly one he didn’t think of himself, and it does complicated things to Sam, knowing that Lucifer is copying his actions so closely. He sighs, flexes his shoulders. 

“You aren’t the same,” Lucifer says. “Not as the rest of them.” Grand sweeping outward gesture to encompass the whole of the planet, and Sam frowns. 

“What do you mean?”

“You’re—different,” Lucifer says, and then makes a complicated face, like he’s unsatisfied with the wording. 

Sam snorts. “Everyone’s different, Lucifer. That’s sort of the point.”

“I mean you’re better than they are,” Lucifer says, and Sam sighs.

“No, I’m not—Lucifer, no, I’m really not,” catching the look on his face. “I have just as many flaws as everyone else.”

“Sam—”

“I’m just human, Lucifer. All your protests to the contrary.”

Lucifer is quiet for a long, long time. Just watching Sam with that freaky angelic focus that Sam thought he was used to, because of Castiel, but it turns out that no, Lucifer’s able to go to a whole other level with it. Watching Sam with the same level of concentration Sam had given the LSAT back at Stanford, carefully poised in his human form. Mimicking Sam’s posture just so, his arms folded across his chest, and Sam’s starting to think he might have fucked something up really badly. Because Lucifer is never quiet for this long, not around Sam. Not when they’re discussing the things that matter.

He opens his mouth, unsure of what exactly he’s going to say, and suddenly Lucifer is across the room. Standing in front of Sam with his head tilted, face caught up in the afternoon glow of the sun coming through the curtains behind them. 

“Yes, you’re human,” Lucifer starts, sounding reluctant. Uncomfortable. 

“So shouldn’t you hate me, too?” Sam asks, and is just as shocked as Lucifer by the raw uncertainty in his voice. Surprised by the question, that he should care what Lucifer thinks. 

Even more shocked by the realization that he’s sick of being something Lucifer despises. 

“You’re my vessel,” Lucifer says, in a tone that makes it clear he thinks that’s answer enough.

“Yeah, but if I wasn’t.” Sam searches Lucifer’s face carefully, his heart doing odd and suicidal things in his chest. “If I was just some human, just some guy you happened to meet on one of your rampages.”

Lucifer looks tense and very unhappy. “Sam—”

“You would have killed me, wouldn’t you,” Sam says, his voice just on the verge of trembling. “You would have burned me out without even thinking about it.”

“Sam.” He sounds miserable, his hands dug into his jacket pockets and it’s human, it’s just such a human thing to do and Sam hates him for it. For even bothering to act like he’s a person when he hates them all so much. 

He isn’t denying Sam’s accusations either and Sam laughs, harsh scuffed-up angry sound. Digging the nails of one hand into the palm of the other, and he turns away for a moment. Scrapes his hand down his face. 

“Guess I wouldn’t be so different after all, if I wasn’t beneficial to you,” he says, and watches as Lucifer’s entire face just sort of. Collapses. Goes shut off and blank and Sam closes his eyes. 

He hears the rustle and flap of wings that means Lucifer’s left, and he waits to feel triumphant. To feel like he’s proven something. Like he’s finally made the delineation between himself and the devil, a thick uncrossable line to separate himself from every evil thing he’s ever hunted.

He’s still waiting a few hours later when he wakes up, but still, all he feels is the crushing sense of loss.

~

He doesn’t see Lucifer again for a week. Spends his time burning away energy that would’ve normally gone straight into trying to hate Lucifer, expends it all on slaughtering shadows and killing nightmares. He throws himself into the hunt with a savagery that alarms even Dean, gets cut up and bruised and ends up with angry stitches across his side, inflamed claw marks from a black dog. Motel after motel of recovery and rest and long whiskey-soaked nights and no Lucifer, and Sam can feel himself slip-sliding into desperation the longer the absence goes on. Knows he shouldn’t be caring, knows he should rejoice in the fact that Lucifer’s left, but even he cannot completely block out the guilt he feels over their last conversation. His words echoing overheated and harsh in his mind, and he knows it was his fault. He shouldn’t have brought it up because Lucifer’s _trying,_ he’s really trying and god, of all the people in the world who could understand misplaced phrasing, it would be Sam. It _should_ be Sam.

When he comes back it’s stiff, and awkward, and in spite of his guilt all Sam can think of is how last time, Lucifer insinuated he’d have killed Sam if he wasn’t his vessel. 

Lucifer doesn’t say anything, not right away, just sits there and watches Sam as he’s prone to do. His face is carefully constructed neutrality but Sam can see straight through all that, it’s still all just smoke and mirrors and underneath the thin veneer Lucifer looks quietly upset, pressing his thumbs into his knuckles and gritting his teeth. 

Sam wonders if the reactions are automatic things his human body is doing, or if it’s something he’s learned from watching everyone else.

Lucifer clears his throat after a while of the two of them just sitting and staring. Says, “You know—I can see your soul,” and the non sequitur throws Sam off, makes him blink. 

“What?”

“I can see your soul,” Lucifer repeats. His fingers resting on his knee, kind of folded there over denim. “I could see everyone’s, if I chose, but it makes things easier to just block them out.” He flicks his eyes over Sam, and Sam curls his fingers in over his stomach on instinct. Wondering just where his soul comes out from. What Lucifer really sees, when he looks at him with that fascinated awed expression. 

“You shine brighter than any human I’ve ever seen,” Lucifer continues, after a moment. “Your soul is clear and beautiful and the first time I laid eyes on you, I could hardly believe you were mine. That my Father would have given me something so pure.”

Sam flattens his mouth, sure Lucifer is—if not lying, then embellishing the truth quite a bit. Because he’s felt dirty as long as he can remember. Some kind of thick dark smear laid across the inside of his chest, the demon blood sliding slick and inescapable in his veins. Even after Ilchester, when Lucifer rose up from the Cage and wiped the urge to drink from Sam’s mind—even since then Sam’s still felt _stained,_ in a way he knows he’s never going to escape, no matter how hard he might scrub at night with cheap motel washcloths under the shower. 

Lucifer is watching him so closely. “You don’t believe me,” he says. Sounding resigned to the fact. 

Sam huffs. Of all the conversations to be having right now. This is not the appropriate one; the air is so wrought and thick with tension it’s nearly tangible, they need to clear that out before they can get started on the detailed contents of Sam’s soul. There were things said before and Sam isn’t sure if they were meant or if they just tumbled out thoughtless and without consideration, he needs to know Lucifer’s true intentions rather than what he supposes them to be, he wants to understand why it’s suddenly so important, so crushingly vital that their relationship make sense to him. 

Out loud: “I’m nothing special, Lucifer, I already told you that.” Pause. “You basically confirmed that I don’t mean shit to you anyway, outside of my status as your vessel.”

Lucifer frowns with his whole face. His body language is hesitant and clipped; he looks uncomfortable in his borrowed skin, unsure of how to show Sam—whatever it is he’s feeling. “I never said that,” he says, and Sam drags his hand down his face. He’s so tired. 

“You never denied it, either.”

Lucifer hesitates; Sam can feel it in every held-in line of his body, every abortive movement his fingers make against his thigh. Then, slow, deliberate, he rises to his feet. Crosses the room, until he’s standing less than three feet from Sam. Radiating cold, his head tilted as he watches Sam with all the intensity Sam does not deserve. 

“I have known you for a long time, Sam Winchester,” he says. “Longer than I believe your mind can fully comprehend. My Father gave you to me when humanity was barely a thought, when there was still order and peace in Heaven and I was still awarded an honorable station. Father approached me while I was building a galaxy with Michael, holding this—this _thing,_ this small bright bundle in his hands. _Touch it,_ he told me, _it’s yours._ And oh, Sam—to hold you—” 

His fingers twitch again, coming up in the air and wavering for an instant before fluttering back to his side. Sam watches the movement, his breath caught up in his throat. In the worship he can hear in Lucifer’s voice.

“You see yourself as tainted,” Lucifer says. “But then as now, you have a purity about your soul, a clarity—your brilliance is unparalleled. You outshone even the galaxy my brother and I were forming.” His hand clenches a little. “I can assure you, Sam—even if you were not my vessel, I could never find it within myself to destroy something that shines as bright as you do. Even if you were not mine—I would want to know you, anyway.” And now he’s reaching up, not hesitating, and Sam’s not stopping him, he probably should be but he isn’t, and he’s not afraid, either.

His fingers catch on Sam’s jaw, and Sam lets it happen. Pretty sure he should be dodging the movement, but god help him, he’s just so tired. Exhaustion raking through his body and Lucifer’s fingers are so soothing, cool and dry and rough. There’s no one else to see and it’s no one’s business anyway, no one’s but theirs, and Sam is frankly a little sick of trying to force himself to pretend he’s so different from Lucifer. Sick of living and breathing like he’s not driven by that same inner compulsion to get it _right_ all the time, to have little things to call his own because the world has denied him so much else already—

He leans into the touch a little, without really acknowledging it to himself. Exhales quietly, feeling Lucifer’s thumb scrape across the slope of his cheekbone. “I will never ask you to be anything that you aren’t, Sam,” he murmurs, and, “Human or not, I have waited for you for a very long time. And you are more important to me than anything else.” 

His fingers find their way into Sam’s hairline for a second before vanishing. Sam’s staring at the floor, but he hears him step back, hears him say again, “You’re my vessel,” and then, tacked onto the end of that statement: “I suppose I can accept your humanity,” very soft and mostly to himself.

It’s the first time Sam’s ever heard someone speak positively of a trait he has that they view as undesirable. Dean’s never apologized for the shit he said over the phone, probably never will—he’s never even acknowledged that he did some fucked up things to Sam when he was hooked on demon blood, or that he started calling Sam ‘freak’ when Sam’s psychic powers first showed up. Cas hasn’t apologized either, or Bobby, or anyone Sam knows that still looks at him sideways when he’s within fifty feet of a demon. As if what happened was his fault. As if what Azazel and Ruby did was his fault. 

Lucifer hates humans. Has hated them for longer than Sam can really comprehend. But he’s willing to overlook his hatred for Sam, and that. 

That’s pretty monumental. 

Sam looks up, mouth open, ready to say—something, he’s not exactly sure what—but Lucifer’s already left. The air faintly charged in a ring around where he was, and for a moment, Sam aches with the loss. The feeling that he just missed another massive opportunity, for something he doesn’t even understand.

~ 

“Do you ever want to do anything—I don’t know. Normal?”

Lucifer glances over from where he’s sitting, cross-legged, very nearly human, on the bed opposite Sam. Who is lying down, arms folded behind his head. Staring at the ceiling, not really thinking about much. Sort of relaxed, in a way he thinks could get very dangerous if he allowed it to. Things have felt different between him and Lucifer since Lucifer admitted Sam’s humanity doesn’t affect the way he views him. Since Lucifer told him that he—what, cares? likes him?—because he’s _Sam,_ not because of some predetermined destiny set on him in Heaven. Things have felt _looser,_ as though barriers Sam wasn’t previously aware of have fallen away, leaving them clean. Fresh. Grasping tentatively at a relationship so new they haven’t even really consciously acknowledged it yet.

“Normal?” Lucifer asks, tilting his head.

“Yeah. You know.” Sam hesitates, flexes his ankles. “Not driven towards or away from the apocalypse. Just. Like. Going for a walk. Eating at a diner.”

“I don’t need to eat,” Lucifer points out, a little dry.

Sam exhales. Rolls onto his elbow, propping his head up on the side of his hand. “That’s not the—you don’t—” He drops his gaze, staring at the space between their beds. Lucifer’s eyes are so intense, even when they’re just here, talking about something as neutral as a day off.

“If I took you to dinner, you _could_ eat,” Sam says. “Right?”

Lucifer’s mouth twitches. “Are you asking me on a date, Sam Winchester?”

Sam is pretty sure it’s illegal to be capable of blushing this hard in a dream. “Could you just answer the question without being an asshole, maybe?” he asks. Though there’s no real heat in his voice.

“I am able to eat, yes,” Lucifer acquiesces. Not bothering with trying to hide his smile, now.

“Okay.” Sam sits up, mirroring Lucifer’s stance. “I mean. Could we? Now? In the dream?” His heart is pounding a little harder than before, he’s not sure why.

But Lucifer’s shaking his head, and Sam tells himself he doesn’t feel the faintest pangs of disappointment. “We’d have to meet face to face,” Lucifer says, quiet, “and I don’t suppose that’s going to happen any time soon.”

 _Of course not,_ Sam should say. _You can’t fool me like that. I’ll never give in to you._ Brash and overconfident and hurtful, tearing the Devil down like everyone else would. Like they all want him to.

 _I don’t want anything from you,_ Sam had snarled, once. Hateful, meant to hurt. But there’s no point in pretending, now, that this isn’t something they both want. No point in acting like Lucifer’s desires are anything less than Sam’s, like there’s anything shocking that Lucifer wants that Sam just isn’t vocalizing. 

“I can’t,” Sam murmurs, digging his fingernail into the pad of his thumb until he creates a little indent in his skin. “You know I can’t.” 

Lucifer breathes out. “I know,” he says, soft. Not quite disappointed, he probably wasn’t expecting any other answer, but—sorry. As unhappy with their circumstances as Sam has found himself, lately.

They’re both quiet for a little while. Facing each other. A vague indefinable ache at the center of Sam’s chest, a longing for—closeness, though he’s not sure why. He calls up the memory of their last meeting, of Lucifer’s hand curled around his jaw, the edges of Lucifer’s fingers brushing his cheek, and feels the loss of it like pain, stark and raw and inescapable. Lucifer is _there,_ he’s _right there,_ but he’s still too far away.

Sam starts, “Come here—” whispered broken shattered syllables; finds Lucifer already moving, settling into the space beside Sam as though, ironically, he was made to fit there. He folds his hands over Sam’s, traces his thumb over the knuckles. It’s a slow, understated movement, barely even there, but it curls into Sam, makes him inhale, sudden and sharp, at the contact. 

Lucifer looks at him. Concern, so much concern, shining in eyes Sam knows far too well now. Concern he doesn’t deserve, shouldn’t want, and yet. He has it, and he does want it, and there’s no one around here, not Dean or Cas or God Himself, who is going to tell him he can’t have. 

“Are you okay—” Lucifer starts, but Sam’s nodding before he’s gotten the sentence all the way out. Feels something give way in his chest as he tilts himself forward. Forehead resting on Lucifer’s shoulder. Breathing him in, letting his eyes fall shut. Just. Relaxing. Leaning most of his weight into Lucifer because he knows he’s allowed. Because Lucifer can keep him from falling. 

“Don’t go,” Sam whispers. “You always—you leave, right around now.” He curls his fingers a little tighter against Lucifer’s. Feeling the heat of his vessel mixing with the ice cold of his grace. “Stay for a bit. Just—do something normal. Like I said earlier.”

It’s quiet again, for a little while. Then, gradually, Sam feels the smallest thing—a heartbeat. Lucifer’s given himself a pulse, Sam hadn’t even been aware of the absence of one before but it serves its purpose of making Sam smile, if only slightly. 

Sam shifts over on the mattress, tugging Lucifer by the wrist. He goes compliantly enough, giving himself over to being manhandled for the time being, so that they end up pressed side by side, legs stretched out. Backs on the headboard. Sam’s fingers tangled with Lucifer’s, where his hand slid down. Lucifer’s thumb still on his knuckles.

He stares mournfully at the remote, which is all the way on the other side of the room. “I guess the same rules apply to TV as to eating—” he starts, but Lucifer twists his free hand, interrupting. There’s a burst of static on the screen, and then _The Golden Girls_ comes on. Faint greenish tint over the picture, the sound a little muffled, but it’s there. Just like it was the last time Sam stayed in this room—March, 1996. A week alone, reading _Flowers for Algernon_ at two in the morning with these same reruns playing as the only light in the room, to keep him awake. Surviving on Lunchables and these giant pretzels they’d sold in the lobby, with mustard and extra packets of salt. 

“I can’t change the channel,” Lucifer says apologetically, “it only plays what you remember.”

“It’s okay,” Sam says. Squeezing Lucifer’s hand. “This is what I meant.” 

He repositions his head on Lucifer’s shoulder. Lets his eyes fall shut. 

He thinks he smells pretzels, for just a second, before they’re overtaken by ozone and rainfall.

~

“So the apocalypse definitely hasn’t been happening,” Dean tells him, suspicious. One evening when they’re trapped in a rain-soaked diner, jukebox playing a blistering static version of Lynyrd Skynyrd, waiting for the clouds to lift so they can get gas for the Impala from the station that’s “just half a mile up the road, sweetheart”, according to their waitress. She slipped Dean her number with their check and has been flirting with him pretty steadily all evening but he’s too focused on being angry with Sam to really notice her. Which means it’s gotten bad, without Sam even realizing. 

“Yeah, no, I guess not,” he says, fast, watching his three remaining tater tots die painful deaths in a puddle of ketchup. 

Dean’s foot makes contact with Sam’s leg under the table. “You did something,” he says. Glaring. 

Sam’s mind drifts instinctively to the last dream. He and Lucifer had been somewhere in Washington, overlooking the Pacific. They’d stood on the balcony for hours, shoulder to shoulder, in total silence. Sometimes Lucifer’s pinky would brush the side of Sam’s hand. He still had his false heartbeat, his face painted in clean pretty lines by the perpetual sunset. Sam had woken with tears on his face, burying them immediately into his pillow. His breath catching in his throat before he could stop it, full of such _wanting,_ this urge to return to the dream. To Lucifer. To that sense of peace, stronger than anything he’s ever felt on the actual planet.

It occurs to him, now, in the diner, that he’s spent more time being genuinely happy in his subconscious in the past few months than he ever has while awake. Almost wishes he _had_ done something, maybe not something so drastic as saying yes but just. Something. He wants to see Lucifer in person, wants to see if that tug and pull is just influenced by what Lucifer’s making him feel or if it’s an actual thing. If it’s possible that Sam could have the same capacity for satisfaction and contentment with another being as everyone else. 

He says, “I haven’t done shit, Dean,” and he says, “Maybe you could fucking trust me for once, instead of assuming things like you do.”

“Sure.” Dean’s smile, his tone, are too easy. Fake in that way he knows damn well Sam hates. “When you give me a reason to.”

It turns out that punching Dean and storming out of the diner comes pretty close to that same sense of satisfaction, after all.

~

He stumbles down the road alone, dragging himself through thick, gray sheets of rain that push so steady and cold at his skin they feel nearly solid. He’s drenched straight through by the time he gets to the gas station, gets a suspiciously stained towel from the attendant to scrub through his hair, with no real results to show. There’s beer in the freezer and he buys two six-packs, goes into them while he’s still standing under the awning. Waiting for the rain to ease up, for Dean to get his head out of his ass and come get him. Which he does, eventually, begrudging. Glaring at Sam as he trudges wetly into the station, demands two gallons of premium before grabbing one of the bottles from Sam’s hands, prying it open on the side of the counter. 

“Hey,” Sam protests, annoyed.

“You shut up,” Dean tells him, black eye lurid under the fluorescent light, and walks out again. Sam follows, reluctant, still drinking. All the way back to the car, and then up the road to the motel. Where Dean deposits him in a room that smells of old sex and stale sheets, heads back out to be a piece of shit to someone else for a few hours. 

Sam kicks off his boots, drinks until he passes out. Doesn’t expect to dream, but he finds himself there anyway. Furious at so many things, torn apart and lost, the same directionless hollow feeling he’d had in the months before he’d left for Stanford. Leans against the wall, drunk and exhausted. Jaw clenched. Waiting. 

Lucifer shows up and Sam lights into him immediately, everything ricocheting around in his head, too much, too much. “It’s your fault,” he slurs, showing Lucifer his knuckles, still smeared in places with Dean’s blood. 

Lucifer, who had shown up with something close to cautious optimism in his eyes, shoves it back down into that practiced neutrality Sam loathes. It’s an angel thing, very typical of all of them and Sam doesn’t get why Lucifer has to do it too, he’s never enjoyed being lumped in with the others. He tries to say this and comes out, in the end, with, “Only half an angel, anyway,” thinking that he should be able to burn a hole into the threadbare carpet, way he’s feeling. 

“You’re drunk,” Lucifer tells him, taking one step forward, folding his arms across his chest. 

“Good job stating the obvious,” Sam grumbles. His throat feels slick, tastes like shit. He’s going to be sorry in the morning, but he’s only aware of that in a distant way. “‘stead of actually answering my question, jus’ avoiding the subject like you do—”

“You never asked me anything,” Lucifer says. His voice is suppressed, burying a harsh sharp quality that wants to surface very badly. He’s angry, and Sam’s too drunk to parse whether the anger is directed at him. Which he supposes is fine, since he also can’t really tell whether he’s angry with Lucifer, or if it’s just something he’s projecting so he won’t have to be angry with himself, for once. For his inability to get anything _right—_

“‘s your fault,” Sam says, and manages to lift himself off the wall.

“You already said that.”

Sam frowns. “Don’t be an asshole,” he says. “Your fault ‘m like this. Fighting with Dean, with everyone. Y’know.” He waves his hand around, feels a faint twinge in his fingers that means he connected the wrong way with Dean’s cheekbone earlier. “Life was a lot—a _lot_ easier before you came along ‘n fucked. Fucked everything up.”

Something brief and shadowed crosses Lucifer’s face. “Was it, really.”

“Yeah.” Sam reaches up, drags his hand down his face. He can’t figure out how he managed to carry his drunken state over a whole level of consciousness. They should award him a medal for that, maybe. “Yeah, it was, Lucifer. Do you. Do you even know how much I hate you, sometimes? Because you. You stand there, you just _stand_ there and I get all. All messed up. Okay? All I do, all I’ve done for _years_ is fight with everyone and I thought I had it—thought I finally figured it out and then you came here, and. And now ‘m fighting all over again and I don’t. I don’t think I don’t _want_ to—”

He stops. Confused. That sentence had sounded better in his head. So much more coherent, like a real argument he could be having with the real Devil. His last-minute resort, one final defense against the inevitable, the thing that’s going to happen any second now. The thing that they’ve been barreling towards since the moment Sam stood in that church in Ilchester and watched the ground split open. 

He says, decisively, “I’m still really fucking mad, Lucifer, but I’m going to kiss you now,” and then it’s just two steps forward and a couple of fists in a worn shirt collar and Sam’s mouth is on Lucifer’s. His lips are surprisingly soft, warm. Sam is trembling, he hadn’t even realized until he started how much he’s been wanting this. Shifts his grip in Lucifer’s shirt, sliding his tongue along the edges of Lucifer’s mouth. Begging, out loud:

“Come on, come _on,_ kiss me back, you—”

But Lucifer’s pushing him away. It’s a slight movement, a hand on Sam’s chest. Holding him back. 

“No,” Sam starts, seconds before he feels Lucifer’s fingers curling into his hair. Something cool and liquid pouring over his scalp, feeling like the lightest of touches in the back of his mind. Soothing over him, clearing his vision. His thoughts. Scraping all the alcohol out of his system until he’s left feeling a little scalded, embarrassed—but sober. 

He blinks at Lucifer. Stares at his kiss-slick mouth, the faint color staining his cheeks. Then: “I’m sorry,” he says, quiet. “I—thanks. I’m so sorry—”

“I just needed to be sure it was what you wanted,” Lucifer interrupts. His voice is gentle, he isn’t even _angry_ at Sam and the thought alone makes Sam want to cry, furious all over again, though with his newly refreshed brain he can tell, unequivocally, that it’s only directed inward, at himself. “Not just something fueled out of hatred towards your brother, or towards me—”

Sam winces, the memory of everything he said while drunk still stark and humiliating in his mind. “Yeah, but I don’t. I don’t hate you, Luce,” he says. The name slipping out naturally, just a little thing he’s tried out in his head, something he’s held back for a while. It makes Lucifer’s mouth twitch in that ridiculously endearing way he has. “I haven’t been able to convince myself I hated you for a long time now. It just.” He hesitates. Takes a breath. 

“It is you,” he says. Still staring at Lucifer’s mouth, fixated on it. The pretty rose-colored lines of it, he can’t believe he’s never consciously noticed that before. “But not. Not like I said before, just. You—you showed up, and I wasn’t fine, but I was pretending I was, and now. Now I can’t even do that, because you make it seem so fucking _easy_ to live outside of everyone’s expectations. You give it this—this _appeal,_ and I—it’s really difficult, when I’m with you, remembering which side I’m supposed to be on—”

That same shadow from earlier crosses Lucifer’s face, and, sober, Sam recognizes it for what it is—sadness. “I’ve had many centuries of practice at living the way you describe,” he says, and, “I’m not going to ask you to suffer like this for me, Sam—”

“Yeah, okay,” Sam interrupts, “except see, Lucifer, the thing is—you wouldn’t need to _ask.”_

This time, when his fists find Lucifer’s shirt, he feels a lot less like he’s slipping off a ship into the bottom of the ocean. There was a space between their chests, still, from when Lucifer had shoved him back earlier, but it’s gone now, and there’s just Sam and Lucifer, holding onto each other. Clinging, Sam’s head bent slightly down. He whispers, “Is this—” and there’s a frustrated, faintly amused huff, a sort of _yes now get on with it_ noise, and then Sam’s kissing an archangel for the second time in under ten minutes. It’s wet and hot and sloppy and uncoordinated; it’s clear Lucifer’s first kiss was quite probably the one Sam attempted while drunk, and Sam finds one hand coming up to Lucifer’s jaw. Guiding him, letting Lucifer press against him. Uncertain, careful, but he _wants._ Sam can feel it coursing through him, building onto his own. Until he thinks he might die from it, gasping into Lucifer’s mouth, his other hand blistering from cold where it’s resting on Lucifer’s hip.

He’s trembling again, hyperaware of every sensation. Guides Lucifer to the bed, kissing him over and over. Hand fisted in his shirt, listening to the helpless pained noises that keep wrenching up from Lucifer’s throat, like he’s never experienced anything close to this in all the millennia he’s been alive, and Sam wakes up smiling, his fingers curled around empty air, mouth tasting like electricity and snow, heart pounding in his chest. 

He thinks this might have been the clue he was missing. 

~

He dreams of moonlight scattered in raw white lines over his bed. Or of the sun setting over the horizon, soaking the room in soft yellowish light. The low underwater sound of dim night traffic outside, minor key mournful rustle of wind pressing through leaves, crackling like empty garbage bags. Lucifer is there every time, this patient half-smile on his face, his eyes shining with something very close to happiness as he watches Sam approach him. 

There’s no finesse to what they do. The dreams are private and Sam doesn’t see the point in either of them pretending this isn’t something they both want, desperately. He shows up and Sam reaches out—always Sam reaching out, Lucifer won’t make the first move and it worried Sam at first until he realized that Lucifer just doesn’t want to assume anything, refuses to push Sam even in this—and they fall against one of the beds, trembling in each other’s arms. Lucifer tangling his fingers in Sam’s hair while Sam breathes him in, hands shaking over the mess of removing clothes until Lucifer gets impatient, blinks them away with a low, predatory growl. Soft animal sound, and Sam knows, as well as Lucifer does, where the power truly lies. That Lucifer could take Sam down, if he really wanted, without even having to lift a finger. 

For some reason it terrifies him even more to know that Lucifer will hand Sam his own archangel blade, handle first, before he allows that to happen. 

Lucifer’s touches are curious, careful. There’s a sense of cautious exploration to the way he drifts his fingers over Sam’s skin, a covetous flavor of sin and want that Sam knows wasn’t bred into him as an angel. This is something he’s developed himself, evidently, during his long periods of waiting in the Cage. This fierce, intense, focused desire of Sam, and only Sam. Touching him like he wants to understand every inch of him, every inch of this flesh designed for Lucifer. As though Sam is something cherished, something special. Treating him with such gentleness it makes Sam’s chest ache.

He looks at himself in the bathroom mirror, sometimes. Hair rumpled, vicious purpling marks sucked into his neck and chest, heavy-lidded eyes. Tries to see himself the way Lucifer does, as this magnificent being he’s just learning about, but all Sam sees is himself, fucked out and sleepy, and he grows self-conscious. Blushing and turning away from his flushed reflection into Lucifer’s arms, finding his mouth, losing himself in the touch of an angel who is teaching himself this quiet, deliberate restraint that doesn’t, _can’t,_ come naturally to him. It’s nothing like what Sam would have expected, had he been told to expect this at all. It’s pure, raw energy crackling between them, that cold heat Lucifer radiates, and Sam cannot get enough. Starts to suspect, as the weeks go on, that Lucifer can’t, either. That this isn’t just a physical need satisfying Sam, something Lucifer’s going along with because it makes Sam happy. That this fulfills some desire in Lucifer, too, something quiet and long closed-off. 

“You don’t mind it, right?” Sam asks, one night. Lying with Lucifer on a balcony overlooking a beach, a motel he’s positive he’s never really been to because John would have never been able to afford the rent on a house this close to the ocean, but. Even so. It’s gorgeous here, the air smelling of saltwater and burnt out campfires. Sam wishes, far from the first time, that he could just. Stay here. In the unchanging world of his dreams, Lucifer half-naked and pliable in his arms. The apocalypse on another plane of consciousness, so far away Sam can pretend, at least halfway, that it doesn’t exist. 

“Mind what?” Lucifer asks, voice muffled against Sam’s skin.

“This,” Sam says, gesturing at their bodies. “This, um. Physical stuff. The touching.” As though they’re in high school, stumbling over their first time in the backseat of a car. “I mean. You’re getting something out of this too, yeah? It’s not just—it’s not just me. Right?”

Lucifer rolls over in his arms. Tucks a loose strand of his hair back behind his ear, watching him in that intense way he has. Like there’s no one else in the world that matters so much as Sam. Like there’s no one else except Sam at all. 

“I enjoy to be wanted,” Lucifer tells him. “I like having your full concentration. The sexual part of it isn’t something angels are made to need, naturally, but I. I haven’t been fully angel for many thousands of years, and I like this physical closeness. I’ve overheard your thoughts, snatches of them, and yes, this is something I’ve desired with you. Perhaps for longer than I’ve been able to recognize.” He leans in, kisses Sam once, close-mouthed. “It isn’t just you, Sam,” he murmurs. “It isn’t just you at all.”

Once, Sam’s dream takes the form of a library. It’s from just a few years ago, after he’d started hunting with Dean again, but it’s completely empty. A single computer monitor lit, and Lucifer’s already sitting at it, his hand pressed against the mouse, curious expression on his face as he watches the screen. 

“What’s this?” Sam asks, laughing a little, walking forward. Folding his legs down, wrapping himself around Lucifer from behind. Resting his chin on his shoulder.

“I want to see it,” Lucifer murmurs, his voice a quiet echo amidst the vast dusty ceilings and rafters of the building. It’s an old library, more for archival purposes than public use, and Sam had been seriously excited to go in during the actual hunt. Remembers spending three full days inside, from open to close, just doing research. Buying M&Ms from the vending machine outside when he’d gotten hungry. 

“See what?” Sam asks, watching Lucifer attempt to navigate the Internet with the same amount of focus Ferdinand Magellan probably used to map out the southern hemisphere. 

Lucifer gestures. He’s pulled up an image of somewhere northern and frozen, ice crystallizing on top of fine, powdery snow. The sun setting, leaving salmon pink streaks across the horizon. There aren’t any humans, it’s just this flat, desolate wasteland, and Sam feels his breath catch, involuntary, in his chest.

“Your planet,” he says, quiet. “Whatever it is you think is so worth saving—whatever you’ve worked so hard at keeping alive—I’d like to see it with you.”

“Oh,” Sam says, a little overwhelmed. And then, “Yeah, okay. Scoot over.” He shuffles forward on his knees, takes the mouse. Spends a long time, what feels like hours, clicking through picture after picture with Lucifer breathing soft over his shoulder. Watching deserts and tundra and rainforests and mountains flash by his eyes, feeling the scratch of the thin carpet under his jeans. Occasionally there are pictures of humans, too, their hands lifted in celebration, or eyes cast down in prayer. Couples getting married, surfers riding sixty foot waves in Hawaii. Pictures of animals Sam’s never seen outside of zoos, pictures of the very deep ocean, eyeless creatures that don’t know the meaning of sunlight.

He doesn’t know what any of it means to Lucifer. If it means anything at all. But later, as they’re leaving, he gets fingers tucked under his jaw, a soft kiss pressed to his mouth. The barest scrape of stubble along his chin, and “Thank you,” Lucifer whispers, quiet. “Thank you.” 

So he’s comfortable. He’s happy. Dangerously so, and he knows that when it falls, whenever and however that might be, it’s going to be bad. 

~

In the end, it’s worse than Sam expected.

There’s a hunt in Minnesota, a vampire nest that’s sprawled out of the woods, called attention to itself from the sheer number of cattle its members have slaughtered. The farmers not far behind. Sam and Dean take care of the nest, as they do, and are heading back to the Impala with knives soaked in blood when the first angel appears, pins Dean to a tree. Sam’s not far behind, knocked out against a stone, and when he wakes he’s strapped to a chair. Shirtless, chest heaving. Scared out of his fucking mind and not bothering to hide it. Dean’s across from him, breathing raggedly. It looks like they popped his shoulder out of its joint and Sam can’t remember if they still have their first aid kit in the trunk. 

“Sammy,” Dean slurs, his jaw gritted. “They found us.”

“Yeah, I see that,” Sam grunts. Glaring at the angel closest to him, some blond executive-looking asshole. His heart racing so hard he thinks he might die from it. 

He wonders where Lucifer is. If Lucifer can sense any of this happening. 

If the dreams have all been fake, and Lucifer actually doesn’t care at all.

They’re in the same barn that had housed the vampire nest until earlier that afternoon. It reeks of blood, animal and human sacrifice that makes Sam want to bury his nose in the thick flannel of his shirt. There’s a thin, pained line between Dean’s eyebrows, but he still manages to make his mouth work, asks:

“How’d you—”

“Everyone is easily manipulated for a chance of reward,” says an all too familiar voice from the doorway, and both Sam and Dean turn. Wincing, Sam feeling this helpless pit opening up in his stomach when he sees Zachariah walk in. Smug and jaunty and god, if there was ever any angel Sam thought should have been made into a demon—

“The vamps led you here?” Dean asks. Hissing when he twists his shoulder the wrong way.

Zachariah laughs, cold unamused sound. Walks over, pressing his hand against the back of Dean’s chair. “We were unable to find you any other way. We had to resort to using those _animals_ as bait—”

Sam glances out the half-open barn door. Where a vamp head is still just visible, hacked off from the source, staining the concrete with blood. “Yeah,” he says, “and it looks like you did good at keeping up your end of the bargain with that reward—”

Zachariah shrugs. Careless. “They received fair payment for what they were,” he says, and, “Considering how often you and your brother lie to each other, I think this is a little bit of the pot calling the kettle—what is it—black? Yes?”

Dean exhales, rough frustrated sound. “What the hell do you want, Zachariah?”

Those fingers clench around the back of Dean’s chair again. “Well, I wanted you both _here,_ so there’s one down,” he says. His eyes are fixated on Sam’s bare chest; it’s more than a little unnerving, and Sam twists a little, trying to get away from his piercing gaze. As intense as Lucifer’s, sometimes, but so different. Zachariah isn’t trying to figure Sam out, he wants to tear him apart. Like a child with a magnifying glass and ants in the summertime. 

“Why the fuck are you staring,” Sam asks, flat, when it gets to be too much. Zachariah snorts, leaves Dean’s chair. Walks over to stand in front of Sam, his arms folded across his chest, and:

“It’s interesting,” he says. “When Castiel left those marks on your ribs, he made it seem as though they were irreversible. But—” and he unfolds one hand, letting it drift down, making Sam’s heartrate kick up even harder—“it’s clear to me that isn’t the case.” And then he passes his fingers, casual, in the air in front of Sam’s chest. 

For a moment it feels like someone’s taken hold of his ribs and _pulled._ Searing burning pain raking across his bones and Sam’s screaming without wanting to, trying to back away from Zachariah, head tossed to the ceiling. He can barely hear Dean yelling over the buzzing in his own mind, thinks he should’ve passed out by now, thinks if the angels wanted to kill them they could’ve done it so much easier than this—

And then it’s over. Sam’s left gasping, shuddering. Hunched over himself as well as he can get with his arms tied behind him. Ribs aching dully, feeling like he’s just had a firebrand on his heart. He sort of wants to throw up and he sort of wants to pass out. Dean’s in a similar state beside him, bad arm hanging dully at his side. Zachariah steps back from them, smirking. Staring at the door.

“Any second now,” he murmurs. “They’ll find you two any second now, and we can finally get on with the apocalypse, as we should have been from the beginning—”

But when Lucifer walks through the door he doesn’t stop to speak to Zachariah. Or any of the angels. Moves straight to Sam, the ropes twisting his arms already falling away. One cool, solid hand on Sam’s shoulders, easing him out of the chair. The expression on his face is terrifying. Gone is the slow-burning patience that fuels every action he makes, the buried fury he holds onto so he can keep himself going every day. Replaced by violence, and hatred, and loathing so deep it makes Sam shiver. Step back a pace.

Lucifer snarls, his voice deeper than in the dreams, though that might just be circumstantial, “You should not have touched him.”

Sam hears Dean make a soft _hey what about me_ noise, but Lucifer ignores that. This isn’t about Dean, and Sam’s pretty sure his brother wouldn’t actually want Lucifer defending him any other time anyway.

“Brother, I—” Zachariah starts. Looking flustered, a little gray. Tugging on the collar of his suit, as though he finds it marginally too tight. 

“You should have learned how to negotiate properly,” Lucifer murmurs. Everything about him one long, dangerous line. He tilts his head when Zachariah opens his mouth. Reaches up with one hand. Twists his wrist, smooth almost lazy movement, and suddenly there’s a pile of ash where Zachariah was. 

Lucifer’s eyes shift almost curiously to the other angels. They all fly out at once, without waiting to see what other tricks he might have up his sleeves for them. 

Then Lucifer turns to Sam. “We’re going to leave now,” he says. 

Sam just nods. He can’t really comprehend doing anything else.

Lucifer’s hand returns to Sam’s shoulder. It’s a careful touch, very nearly apologetic, but it’s familiar, and in spite of the fear Sam felt upon his entrance he can’t help relax into Lucifer’s fingers. Exhaling, already feeling the pain in his chest ease up.

Without looking at Dean: “I suppose you want me to bring your brother too.” His tone suggesting he’d rather eat oil slick off the highway.

“I. Um.” Sam glances at Dean, who just snorts. Rolling his eyes. Making Sam wish he could just leave his brother here, if only to spare himself from the fight he knows they’re going to have later.

But he’s not saving the world just so he can spare the people who are kind to him, so he nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Dean too,” and there’s a soft popping sound, a rush of air filling space, and the three of them are back at the motel. Loose papers rustling around, the television remote falling off the table and landing with a thud on the carpet.

Castiel comes immediately after, takes one look at Lucifer, and drags Dean out of the room. Sam isn’t sure if he should be grateful or worried, but decides to go for the former. Unless Cas and Dean return with spells, demanding that Sam shove Lucifer back in the Cage. Though, frankly, Sam’s not sure he’d go along with it. Even if they are all in person, now. No way to hide anything anymore, not from anyone.

Lucifer’s fingers are on Sam’s jaw, turning his head away from the door. That relaxed, patient look has crept back onto his face while Sam wasn’t paying attention, all practiced ease and something bordering on amusement. “Hello, Sam,” he murmurs, and Sam feels his mouth tugging up into a smile. Leaning into the touch as he did in the barn, as he’s done in the dreams for months now, and Christ—this is Lucifer. In person. Something Sam never thought he’d have, not really. 

Lucifer says, “You’re very— _real,_ here,” this soft fascinated note to his voice, and Sam swallows. Nods. 

“Yeah, you too,” he says. Because Lucifer is, in a way Sam can’t even explain. He’s solid and a little warmer to the touch than he was in the dreams, more. More _present,_ seeming to fill the whole room despite being trapped in borrowed flesh. 

They sit on the bed together. Bumping knuckles. Lucifer reaches out with his free hand, presses his fingers against Sam’s ribs. What remained of the dull, pervasive throb fades away, something in Sam sealing itself shut. Leaving only the sensation of Lucifer’s skin on his, and that’s different here too. Every brush of Lucifer’s thumb against Sam’s chest making him pop out in goosebumps, though he’s far from cold. They’ve known each other, now, in every way possible, yet in person it feels like the first time all over again. Sam can feel himself blushing. Staring at Lucifer’s mouth.

He says, “You saved us,” and he says, “They had us there, we couldn’t have done anything about it and you didn’t. You didn’t ask me to say yes.”

Lucifer’s eyes snap up to meet Sam’s. His gaze is blistering, as intense as the rest of him. Sam had forgotten how it felt at the beginning of the dreams, trying to get used to that. 

“I wouldn’t have done that to you,” Lucifer says, quietly. “I would never coerce you like that.”

Sam reaches up. Presses his hand against Lucifer’s, where it’s resting over his heart. “I know,” he murmurs. “I just. Thank you.”

Lucifer looks so tired, impossibly sad. His fingers flex a little under Sam’s, twisting until he can twine them together. Bring them down to rest on Sam’s thigh. 

“It’s the same for me, you know,” he says, after a few minutes, and Sam clears his throat. Confused.

“What—”

Lucifer draws in a breath. “You’ve—you’re a very confusing person, Sam. Like you told me once, when I am near you I have a great deal of trouble remembering which side I want to be on.”

Sam reaches out with his free hand. Brushes Lucifer’s hair back, feeling the short strands move under his fingers. “Were you ever on any side, Luce?” he asks.

Lucifer’s mouth twitches. More out of self-deprecation than any real humor, but some of the tension in his shoulders dissipates, if only a little. “I am on my own side,” he says, carefully, and then, “It just so happens that lately.”

There’s a hesitation. Lucifer stares at some point over Sam’s shoulder until he drops his hand a little, running it over the rough stubble on Lucifer’s cheek, down to his jaw. Turning his head. Nearly close enough to kiss him, but “Lucifer?” he prompts, instead. Keeping his voice gentle. 

Another deep breath. “Lately,” Lucifer says, his eyes flicking over Sam’s face, “my side happens to include you, too.”

“Oh,” Sam breathes. Feeling a little shaky, a little off-balance. Like he might fall. Though he thinks that would be okay, now, with Lucifer there to catch him. 

“You told me once that I wouldn’t have to ask you to live outside everyone’s expectations,” Lucifer says. Stroking his thumb over Sam’s knuckles. “You told me I made it seem appealing, that you thought it might be easier with me.”

Sam nods. He doesn’t really trust his voice, doesn’t know what’s coming. 

“I swore, months ago, to give you whatever you want,” Lucifer says. “And I believe that—if I were to stop the apocalypse, and stay with you, that would be a bit like defying expectations. For both of us.”

“Oh, god,” Sam whispers, his throat tight. “Luce—”

“It was you or the world, Sam,” Lucifer says. Final and firm, as though there’s no question, no debate, and then he’s kissing him. Fingers dragging through Sam’s hair, rough catch and pull on Sam’s scalp as Lucifer draws him down. Tasting of ice and fire, making Sam feel a thousand, a million things he never thought he’d be allowed. Not here, not in person. Lucifer real and warm and _alive_ in his arms, not just a dream. Here to stay with Sam, as long as either of them wants. 

He tangles his fingers in Lucifer’s shirt. Grips his other half in his hands, holds on tight. Feeling Lucifer’s hands come up to curl around his, cool and steady and _there,_ as much laying claim over Sam as it is relinquishment of his own control. Allowing Sam to have him the same way he has Sam. As much made for Sam as Sam was made for Lucifer. That sense of possession returned, shared between them. Deeper than anything Sam’s ever experienced, ruining him for anyone else. Though he thinks he’s always known, right from the beginning, that there would never be anyone for him again after this. Not after Lucifer, who has held the universe in his palm, shaped galaxies and stars with his fingertips, and still, _still,_ chose Sam over all of it. Over everything. 

It’s overwhelming. It’s humbling. It’s everything Sam wants, or will ever want, for the rest of his life. 

_This is mine,_ Sam thinks, breathing out into Lucifer’s mouth, pressing him back against the mattress. Listening to the soft approving noises he makes, smiling against his lips. _I have fought too hard to make it here with him, and I’m not letting go._ No matter what any of them say, no matter what any of them do—Sam refuses to let go.


End file.
